I do believe all poets must not only read a lot of poetry but read a lot about poetry. Of my 50 favorite poets, there is not one who has not written about poetry, the philosophy of their work and of the craft. That in itself is fascinating- and difficult, like the depth you find in NY Review of Books. I do about 2/3 (poems) to 1/3 (being books about poetry) From the most philosophic works of archetypes by Northrop Frye to the most public and basic questions of Zupruders good seller "Why Poetry?" .
That last book opened up a new reality for me, to I ask myself all the time who am I writing for, in context to all this reading...I realized I was really trying to communicate the poetic truths of living, of my own small life in the world so full of beauty, horror, paradox and death. I realized to do this I had to make compromises, to not try to impress or amuse myself with poems that could only be understood by me. The craft and presentation became as important as the message. That is currently my direction, I'm writing "collections" of poems with themes so a reader could enjoy a concrete theme. (The last book I just read, a signed collection by Ferlinghetti ( nice and cheap in a used bookstore) was just that- the theme of light in "How to Paint Sunlight." Accessible and very full of several poems about light)
So you are stating two different issues:
I don't like being not understood, Having people throw up there hands perplexed, I'd rather be popular.... Its lonely
But I cant write for others because than it would be feeling like a commercial venture My motivation would be destroyed.
Id rather be desolated and write for those few who get the twinge...
Well, first of all, we poets are possibly lucky because we ain't making beans for our poems. Forgetaboutit. Even our most lauded poets end up teaching to get the health care and severance. I suppose there may be 3 poets in Amerika that make a living on just writing poetry....if that many. Who's buying? I didn't see much word "poetry" once in this weeks NY Times review of books. Only some letters crashing last weeks review of Leonard Cohen, who the critic called a wonderful lyricist and performer, but an awful poet. These dialogues are important to me, but really, quite a small audience. Either way, lyrics and song paid the rent, not Cohen's books of just poetry.
I'm sure there is no immediate cure for your paradox. If you want to be popular you have to make compromises. If you don't want to alter your vision, you can get the joy of a smaller readership and forget the rest. You have to manage expectations is a world that hardly notices our craft.
It's hard to be both, I suppose you should stay true to your motivation. And if readers like me don't get it, **** em. Let it suffice we acknowledge the craft, and that we will get closer to some poems more than others be enough. For me, accessibility, the ability to engage a reader into whatever poetic truth I am feeling, is more important than in any way hiding the meaning in the poem in which I alone can understand it.
I want people who never read poetry, which is most people, pick up a poem by me and feel the poetry power without feeling intimidation which is what most people feel when they read most poems published today. For me its that fine line between letting the imagination do the work, and the poem setting up the narrative to allow it by inviting a reader into it. I get great joy reading my poems to non poets who are scared by even the idea of it, and get them to feel something new, that wonderful way Aristotle put it- that poetry provides an ultimate truth that is found beyond the boundary of philosophy.
Best Mark
…………………...

Admittedly I have gone off the rails focusing on the meta or man as dreamer. Are we not dreamers first before descending into the material, deadening the faculty of imagination or as the I Ching says "a darkening of the light"
I want to bring the reader up and when I read I want to have the sensation of ascending I try to give what I like to receive which is to be brought into greater fluency and light
Have we abandoned our inner life to such an extent that when confronted with it we find our selves strangers to it; reinforcing and amplifying a kind of cognitive dissidence?
Are we in a sense a stranger to our selves having lost the lucidity of our magical youth
Do we see the world as vacant utilitarian stuff and other humans predictable lusterless cogs in a wheel like cued robots?
Witches Seers, Voodoons , Hermeticists, Kabbalists and Occultists of very stripe know and use objects as essential to their operations and craft because they have hidden meaning and power.
Has the life of fantastical creative cognition been sacrificed to inveterate congenital pragmatism?
"Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality".
Andre Breton
To transgress is to process ones madness as opposed to the customary botched behaviors of repressive modalities we hide behind . It seems to me that poetry is a great ground for that exploration.
Perhaps Its a good thing for a reader to think about what the writer means, albeit a difficult pleasure as opposed to the instantaneous and facile modes of naming and claiming Reading towards the abstract can be a mystical experience Most people who read are shallow readers Shall I than aspire to be a shallow writer?
What surrealism (Detailed descriptive language unmoored from linear rationality) affords the writer like pure abstraction to the visual artist is a great opportunity to explore the musicality of language ie the musicality of form i.e. the energetic configurations of architypes.
Part of our craft that makes things crackle as you know well remains sound play ie the strategy of syllables ... Long vowels / short vowels...the length of words and sound of words in relationship to one another
As you know Mark to analyze the subtle abstraction of sounds i.e. words to the ear is just like music and like music although not wholly translatable has an undertow of non verbal meaning especially if exploited out side the linguistic necessity of linear prose like poems i.e. a device that most never use consciously and strategically or certainly to its fullest potential.
So when we say a poem is beautiful do we impart mean its those amazing tintinnabulating sounds that ****** with their musicality? Poems that do that well stand out to me.
Further I think we are in error when we confuse the realistic with the materialistic. It seems to me realism has magnitudinal underlying meta elements that need to be felt in poetry and to think other wise in my opinion would be a dull conceit
A good example is thought itself
When we speak our ideas thoughts impulses we have no real sense of where they emerge from The processes are so meta their incomprehensible even to neuro science and scientists have little if any understanding of consciousness or its meaning as far as I know
So perhaps the surrealist has a place of worth too; and that is to remind people of their inner life out side the cage of end product think and commodification. After all what is a life and what is a poem?
Best Z

virtual school moments (in senryus)

I forget that I'm
virtual school, because I'm
really in my room.

And start brushing my
hair or singing a song I'm secretly
listening to - until friends text me!

My mom forgets I'm
in v.school, comes in, to yell
at me about dishes.

My cat walks across
my keyboard submitting "84;'/jifgvbzws"
as a test answer.

"It was a typo!," I complain,
“You still got an "A"," she says.
"But I LOST 4 points!!" Argh!
"Get a life!," she says.

“I love you.” he said, his voice raspy and emotional.

“You..?” I asked softly, and he nodded yes, slowly.

I kind of moved him away a bit - with a soft stiff-arm - to see him better in the limited light. He looked serious and a little flushed, as if feverish. I examined his face, looking for insincerity or jest but saw none. Perhaps this “love” could use some examination.

“Would you convert to Judaism for me?” I asked

He looked surprised and a little confused. “Are you Jewish?” He asked, hesitantly.

“No.” I answered. He still looked confused.”I’d be proud to be Jewish,” I clarified. “or to have a Jewish boyfriend.”

“Then.. why would I need to convert?” He asked, squinting with concentration.

“We were examining your sumptuous commitment to love.” I said, “forgetaboutit.”

Lisa and I finally tested covid-free! When we saw our results, we began an impromptu dance that felt like levitation.

Although my covid case seemed much milder, Lisa’s been nothing but supportive. Why just yesterday morning, before we tested, Lisa said, “If you test covid-free before I do, I’ll **** you.” She was holding a spork which gave the threat a specific gravity it might otherwise have lacked.
“Back off, Sweeny,” I said.

We worked the next day, masked - just in case - and I’d swear that Rebecca, my surgeon, almost smiled when she saw me. As funny as Rebecca is, off-hours, once she puts on that white coat - forgetaboutit - she goes to some other, humor-free zone.

That night, we went out to our favorite bar to celebrate our Lazarus-like resurrections.

In the club, as we were walking to the bar, Lisa asked me, “What if we get carded?” I gasped. Never, have I EVER been carded. To even suggest the possibility is to risk breaking a spell that has lasted since I was fifteen years old and first walked in the adult-bar world.

It’s not that I look old, I’ve been told I don't look 21 (although I’m almost 20) - but in dark, bar-light - I just look “right,” like I belong. And let's face it, no bar turns away college girls or charges them a cover - we’re good for business.

I put a hand on Lisa’s shoulder and stopped us in our tracks. “Turn around three times,” I said.
“Why?” She asked. “To break the god-****, bad luck, vu doo you just put on us!” I said exasperatedly. She shrugged and started to turn in a circle. Again I took her by the shoulders, “Counter-clockwise,” I instructed, “don’t you know anything?!” Once she’d broken the jinx, we were free to go on.  The next part can only be poetry.

Behind the bar were shelves of bottles, brightly lit,
with pastel glows that shame the merely silver moon.
Red rums, golden bourbons, begging you to commit,
elixirs that dull every pain and brighten every mood.
Give us your tired, your lonely, and like Houdini
we’ll invoke fun with mystical treats like martinis.

We were basking in those lantern-like glows, like tourists, in heaven, when a bartender said, “What can I get you?” How generous those words were, how open and inviting.

“What’s your name?” I asked, he was wearing a name tag but I leaned in and gave him my friendliest smile. It’s important to establish a personal connection - but you can’t get carried away. He might be gay and decide you’re trailer.

“Brian,” he said. Brian was talking to me, but then he’d noticed Lisa and suddenly, he couldn’t take his eyes off her (Lisa’s an adriana). This bartender wasn’t gay at ALL.

I handed him my black, Centurion, American Express card “Can we set a tab for us?” I motioned to include Lisa, “and please include a 30% tip for yourself.” I smiled. He smiled.
“Oh, and there’ll be a gentleman joining us as well (Charles).”
“Sure.” he said, as he swiped the card on his iPad, adding, “now, what are you having?”

I’m a bit of a bon vivant, where cocktails are concerned but tonight, we’ll keep it vanilla.
“We’ll start with a Cherry coke (for Charles) and,” I looked at Lisa for approval, “Two American Martinis?” She smiled, “Please,” I added, putting my card away.
The coke is psychologically important; it gives the bartender what’s called 'plausible deniability.’
“Do you have a menu?” I said, as he turned to go. “Coming right up,” he said.

We were on a rooftop terrace that overlooked the Boston skyline. To the left, there were tables enclosed in glowing, geodesic bubbles that changed colors and off to the right, a dance space where couples were dancing, and a DJ was spinning ‘Sorja Smith’s - Little things.’

Our drinks arrived and Lisa and I laughingly toasted our covid survival.
At that moment, at least, everything seemed right with the world.

I shaved my legs this morning. “Alexa, put dinosaur Band-Aids on my shopping list.”

Once you get in the college routine, time speeds up
One minute you’re young and carefree
the next you’re young and free-time free.

MIT guys

A group of MIT students were visiting Yale for some event. Sophie, Anna and I were in the residential dining hall. I’d finished eating and I was trying to read, when this group of MIT guys swauntered in.

My impression of MIT guys is that they’re short and they flirt a lot. They’re all over the place, like they’re manic or on holiday and they think they’re going to pick up girls. (on a Tuesday night)

One guy said, “I’m new to the area, could you help me with directions to your house?”

Another came up with, “I’ve just become religious, ‘cause you’re the answer to my prayers.”

“What are you up to tonight?” This short stranger asks, leaning rudely on our table and acting like he’s lookin’ to get inside-the-ride.

“I’ve gotta read two chapters before tomorrow,” I said, somewhat annoyed with these dinkheads. They finally decided (realized) we’re boring and moved on to other female diners.

standing in line

Americans seem to love lines. I hate standing in lines. People don’t line up for things in Paris. There aren’t “bus lines.” The person who guessed right and is closest to where the bus door stops and opens, or the quickest person or the most ruthless person will be first on the bus. There aren’t any lines at cinemas or the boulangerie (bakery) or even at the Apple store - Apple tried to impose American style order - but #forgetaboutit.

possible mistakes

“I want a blonde boyfriend,” Leong said out of the random last night,
”and dye my hair blonde.” Leong’s from Macau, China. Her glossy, cornsilk hair is a sumptuous curtain of raven black.

“Noo,” Anna and Lisa said, almost in unison.
“I’d trade you,” I said, freely offering my baby blonde rat's-nest.

“There’s an individual,” Leong began, “I see when leaving chemistry class, who has the most beautiful head of frosted blonde tips. Let me just show you,” she says, pulling up her phone.

“You got a picture?” Sunny asked - she loves stalking.
“No!” Leong snorted, insultedly, “Investigative research on Instagram.”

“Is this a potential mate?” Sophie asked.
”I think it’s a suiter,” Leong said, slyly smiling, to laughs all around.

“Woah, Let me see em!” Lisa said, reaching for the phone.
“Gimmie!” Anna demands too.

“Should I project it?” Leong asks, waving her phone around to protect it.
“Hells, yes!” Sophie practically shouts.

“So, it’s the frosted tips that get you?” Sunny says, “Ooo, PSA, if you’re a man looking for a beautiful Chinese lover..”

Our 55” TV becomes Leong’s Insta feed and the pic pops up.

There’s a second of silence. “I think it’s a girl,” Lisa said, squinting and tilting her head.

We all study the pic. Is this the right person? I wonder.

“You may be a Lesbian,” Sunny whispers, before the room descends into chaos.